Poland’s Chronic Toilet Paper Shortages

By

Marynia Kruk

Jan 5, 2010 4:40 am CET

When my parents emigrated from Poland in 1986, one of the few things they took with them that wasn’t a practical household item was a roll of rough, gray, government-issued toilet paper. My dad took it alongas a memento of the reality they had left behind each time we moved, from France to Canada, and finally from Canada to the U.S. I think it finally got lost during a move in Philadelphia, from one home to another.

Bruno Claudio

A toilet of a Warsaw bar, off of ul. Nowy Swiat.

Chronic shortages of toilet paper were a perennial and humorous example of the widespread shortages of goods plaguing Poland’s economy prior to the collapse of communism 20 years ago. In the 1971 classic Polish movie “Nie lubię poniedziałku” (“I don’t like Mondays”), a woman thankful for not having received a traffic ticket hands a few rolls of toilet paper threaded on a string to a militsiya officer (policeman in the People’s Republic of Poland) .

The underlying context is that this toilet paper necklace, which the militsiya officer hangs happily on his motorcycle handlebars (not steering wheel — thanks to a reader for pointing that out), is a highly prized item.

Nowadays, you can buy a whole plethora of toilet paper varieties in Polish grocery stores, from the gray old-school kind to the fancy, fluffy stuff. And yet, to my taste, the shortages of toilet paper and paper towels in Polish public-space restrooms, from nondive bars, restaurants, through shopping centers, museums and my neighborhood gym, occur too frequently and are met with too much indifference from the staff.